A blog about media and technology. Sorry, no cat GIFs.

Tag Archives: mistakes

If you’ve ever been on Twitter, I’m willing to bet you’ve lamented (or cursed, depending on your temperament) the social network’s lack of an edit button. Once you hit send on your tweet you can’t bring it back to fix a typo, punch up a joke or soften a harsh statement. Your only recourse is to delete and start over.

But in my time following technology news and dealing with computers, I’ve learned one rule that applies to just about any situation.

Nothing is as easy as it should be.

As Saqib Shah wrote at digitaltrends.com, the addition of an edit button to Twitter raises other questions. Should there be a limited time available to edit a tweet? What about a change log so you can still see all the iterations of a particular tweet? What happens if you accidentally retweet an older version of a tweet that the author didn’t want to circulate? Or should a user just be able to edit infinitely, cleaning all objectionable tweets in his/her timeline without deleting them?

Right now, if you want to change your tweet you have to delete it and rewrite it. It’s a pain, but as tasks go it’s fairly low on the annoyance scale. The key is to check what you write before you post it.

We can look to older technology for a lesson in how to handle this. Take typing classes. When I learned how to type on a typewriter, we weren’t allowed to correct our mistakes. Speed mattered, and fixing typos slowed you down. So you had to keep typing, errors and all. The point was to teach you to type quickly and accurately.

If you don’t have a forgiving environment for making mistakes, you learn not to make them. The many, many typos and ill-conceived tweets on Twitter show that not everyone has learned this. But if Twitter becomes editable, users run the risk of becoming more sloppy, both in thought and execution, because they will be able to fix it later.

I would certainly use an edit button on Twitter if it became available. But I’d rather see the company crack down on trolls. Hate speech is so much more disturbing than spelling mistakes and broken hyperlinks.

Each week I plumb the depths of the interwebs to find people who behaved badly on social media. Sadly, it takes almost no time at all to find miscreants on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere who ought to know better but don’t. These are some of their stories.

Infamy on the back of a turtle

A man in Alabama has the wrong idea about what makes for a compelling animal video. James Terrance Allen was charged with animal cruelty this week after he made a live video on Facebook showing him dousing a turtle with alcohol and setting the animal on fire.

We may applaud the people who saw this horrific act on social media and called police. But others must have been rooting for Allen. He reportedly said he’d set the turtle on fire if his video received 100 views. Shame on him, but shame also on the people who enabled him to get attention, ignominious as it may be.

The one bright spot: The turtle survived and is expected to recover.

Dropbox drops the ball

Remember that hack of Dropbox, the cloud-based file storage site, from a few years back? It turns out that, as with LinkedIn earlier this year, the company underplayed the extent of the security breach. As many as 69 million accounts could be affected, Bloomberg reports.

There is no easy answer when a company’s user accounts are made vulnerable, but some up-front honesty about the known extent of the breach is a good start.

Facebook fakery extends to Myanmar

A story circulated earlier this week that the Myanmar’s Ma Ba Tha, a group of Buddhist monks, had circulated a racist Facebook post against former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, calling him an ethnic slur and using the face of Morgan Freeman in place of Annan’s in the photo. Only problem is: The post is a fake, published by someone impersonating the group.

Annan is in the country to try to bring peace to an area of Myanmar that has seen widespread abuses of Muslims there. Ma Ba Tha has been accused in the past of inciting violence against Muslims in the region. But in this case, the provocative Facebook post is a fake, just like far too many posts on social media.

Flag on the play

This week, a Texas A & M assistant football coach was disciplined Monday in the wake of a minor Twitter storm he created. After Tate Martell, a sought-after recruit from Las Vegas, announced last week he was reopening his recruitment, Aaron Moorhead wrote a series of tweets decrying the decline of loyalty. Martell had given a verbal commitment to the Aggies before changing his mind.

Perhaps Moorhead forgot that old saw about verbal contracts not being worth the paper they’re printed on.

In any case, I hope he learned the most important lesson of social media: You don’t have to tweet every thought you have.

All this over a goat

Sometimes a funny goat video is just a funny goat video. But that’s not how police say a Massachusetts man took it.

Kevin Sullivan took offense when a woman he knew shared a video of a goat (also named Kevin) getting ridiculed and acting mean toward other goats. The human Kevin thought it meant he was a bad father, according the Boston Globe. He met the woman and her boyfriend. A fight ensued, and police say Kevin stabbed the friend.

He’s now charged with assault and battery.

But at least he defended his reputation as a father.

The imaginary threats next door

A social networking site in California had to change the way its users report suspicious activity after some say it was used for racial profiling, the AP reports.

Nextdoor.com was created to connect real-life neighbors in online communities. But a group in Oakland, Calif., says users were profiling minorities, posting photos of, say, a black man walking “too slowly” in a neighborhood. The site’s administrators say they’re changing the process so people will have to think a little more before they post.

You know, how everyone else does on every other social network on the planet.

It’s a good move, because sometimes a guy walking down the street is just a guy walking down the street. Make that most of the time.

You may have heard some of these stories about social media fails this week. If so, here they are again. If you haven’t heard them, read on:

Culture shock

Three University of Minnesota basketball players were suspended for the rest of the season this week after a sexually explicit video appeared on the social media accounts of one of the players.

Last Friday the videos appeared on Kevin Dorsey’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, according to the Associated Press. Head coach Richard Pitino suspended Dorsey and teammates Nate Mason and Dupree McBrayer, as well.

“I believe this is the best thing for the basketball program as we strive to build a strong and respectful culture each and every day,” Pitino said.

Youthful indiscretion is probably to blame for the videos, which were deleted within a half-hour of their original posting. But it’s never too early to learn what kind of social media activity will get you in hot water.

Torrent of hypocrisy

DJ Deadmau5 is one of my top five Canadians. Reason No. 1: He went on a coffee run with Toronto’s then-Mayor Rob Ford in a strangely fascinating YouTube video. Reason No. 2: He called out Kanye West for what looks like West’s downloading of torrent software.

According to SPIN.com, West tweeted a screenshot of his browser this week, showing he was listening to Sufjan Stevens on YouTube. The problem is, the screenshot also shows other tabs in his browser, including one for Serum, software for beat-making that costs $200, and one for Pirate Bay, the place to go if you want to illegally download music, software, etc. — you know, if you’re a moral cretin.

West, who’s outspoken in his opposition to online piracy, looks to be a hypocrite. Of course, there could be a valid explanation for why he was on Pirate Bay’s website. But not many people, including Deadmau5, are buying it.

The DJ called him out on Twitter, using words I can’t reprint here. He also suggested starting a Kickstarter to help Kanye raise the $200 to buy Serum and used the hashtag #prayforyeezy.

Maybe next time Kanye will learn to not take a screen capture of the entire window.

Impersonating a police department

Police presence on social media is generally a good thing. But police in Parma, Ohio, are dealing with an unusual Facebook problem:

Someone started a fake page for the department. In one post, the bogus page suggested ways sex offenders could have their names removed from the state database, according to cleveland.com.

The problem is, this fake page is causing real outrage — so much so that the actual police department had to warn residents that this bogus social media account exists.

Hockey plight in Canada

The Montreal Canadiens had to apologize this week after the team’s Twitter account let slip some responses to messages that contained offensive user names and, in some cases, racial slurs. The hockey team launched a campaign to thank its 1 million Twitter followers, automatically replying with a picture of a team jersey with the users’ Twitter handle on the back. Some of those,

The team had good intentions, but sometimes it helps to have humans double-check your tweets. Bots can be efficient, but sometimes they can be jerks, too.

Location, location, location

A Menifee, Calif., maintenance worker is in jail after police said he stole more than $250,000 from 33 women in Orange County. He reportedly found his victims via Instagram.

Police in Fullerton said Arturo Galvan would spot women in malls, coffee shops, etc, track their locations through Instagram and find their homes from geotagged photos. He then stole laptops, jewelry and underwear from his victims, police said.

This is a lesson to anyone who turns on their location data: Be careful how you use it.

Anti-social use of social media

Twice this week, schools had to close because of threats posted on social media:

In Willows, Calif., a threat against the high school led to classes being canceled throughout the district, which has about 1,400 students.

In Ellicot, Colo., an anonymous app for teens to express their feelings was the source of an anonymous threat against Ellicott School District 22, a small district east of Colorado Springs. Classes were canceled Monday but resumed Tuesday.

An Eastern Washington man: Police say that Jose Oliva Jr. posted sexually explicit images of his girlfriend on her social media accounts, then demanded money from her in exchange for removing the photos, the Tri-City Herald reports. According to the newspaper, the woman didn’t know she was being filmed, but became his ex-girlfriend when she found out.

Oliva is now in jail on charges of extortion. I imagine if he ever gets a Tinder profile, he’ll get swiped left. A lot.

A St. Paul, Minn., police officer: Sgt. Jeff Rothecker urged drivers to “Run them over” in a Facebook post for which he has since apologized. The “them” in the post were the protesters taking part in a march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day who were rallying against police killings of two black men in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in 2014.

Rothecker is on leave while the department investigates. He was contrite in his apology, saying::

“My poor choice of words conveyed a message I did not intend and am not proud of. Shortly after submitting my post, I re-read and deleted it. As a law enforcement officer, I would never intentionally encourage someone to commit a crime. I very much regret my actions,”

The lesson here, for Rothecker and everyone else on social media, is that the time to delete a post you might regret is BEFORE you hit the blue button, not after.

This new year, let’s resolve as a society not to spread false information on social media.

It feels like I typed that sentence about 500 times in the past several years, but this year I really really mean it.

The latest scam is a so-called “coupon” that has been traveling around Facebook offering 50 percent off in-store purchases at Dick’s Sporting Goods. All you have to do is share a link with two of your friends, and blammo! Free coupon.

Right there’s a red flag.

It is, as you might have guessed, complete bunk.

I called the company’s customer service line to find out if the coupon is legit. “Unfortunately, it is not,” the friendly rep told me.

Here’s another:red flag:

The site where the “coupon” is available is dailycoupon.me. That’s a domain that was created two days ago, on Jan. 3, and is registered in Panama.

Dick’s creates all of its own coupons; it doesn’t contract with third parties.

As a rule, you should always be suspicious of websites that offer you some great deal in exchange for sharing, liking or signing up your friends. Even those Facebook posts that only ask you to “Like” or “Share” a post without offering anything in return — from people who want their content to gov viral — ought to be looked on with suspicion or, better yet, ignored.

I’m sorry if you were counting on a half-off coupon. Please do the rest of the world a favor and stop sharing it.

There are weeks when social media makes me weep for the human race. This is one of those weeks. Why? Read on:

Gabriel Rabara: The Fresno Bee says a man on probation posted a photo of himself with weapons and cash on Facebook. The 30-year-old Rabara has felony convictions and is not allowed to possess firearms. He has been charged with illegal firearms possession, all thanks to a social media post.

An Indiana school district: Two cafeteria workers were disciplined after they posted remarks on Facebook criticizing referendums asking for tax increases to fund a new elementary school and renovations to the high school. They are fighting back, however; Tina Gracey and Brenda Farnsworth’s cause was taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a federal lawsuit on Monday. The district contends the women’s online criticisms violated the school’s social media policy. But when does a person’s right to free speech run afoul of her employer’s policy of acting professionally?

It’s not like they were journalists taking sides on an issue they covered. Gracey and Farnsworth are cafeteria workers talking about taxes. More importantly, they are taxpayers who had a stake in the outcome of the vote. Why shouldn’t they express their opinions?

Big Ten Football fans: College football, for all the millions of money it generates for football programs higher education, is, at its core, only a game. That’s why the people who took to social media to excoriate Michigan punter Blake O’Neill, who botched a punt that led to a game-winning touchdown by rival Michigan State, need to lighten the hell up. The criticism got so bad that Michigan’s athletic director Jim Hackett published an open letter asking for an end to the “thoughtless comments.”

His effort may be like shouting into a hurricane, but I applaud his effort.

Social media was in the news a lot this week. Journalist Matthew Keys, an expert at reporting news on Twitter, was convicted of helping hackers get into the L.A. Times’ website. Textbook publisher McGraw-Hill was shamed on Facebook for a map in one of its history textbooks referring to African slaves as “workers.” And a hotel in South Carolina was shamed on Facebook for turning away a flood victim and his family because they brought pets. And there are these stories. If you have any faith in humanity after you reach the end, you’ll be rewarded with news of a social media winner.

George Zimmerman: The killer of Trayvon Martin who has a modified Confederate battle flag as his avatar sparked yet another controversy this week. Zimmerman retweeted an image of Martin’s dead body in late September. On Monday, amid this outrage, he posted a letter to Twitter apologizing for it, claiming he didn’t mean to retweet the photo. The image was marked as “sensitive,” so he didn’t click on the blocked image to see what it was before he retweeted it.

That sounds plausible and it’s likely what happened. But you should never retweet anything — a link, a photo, whatever — without reading it first. That’s a basic social media fail, so we shouldn’t let Zimmerman off the hook. Of course, he also posts racist material, including a photo meme linking a black child to prison, so maybe we should just keep George Zimmerman out of our collective timelines altogether.

Maitland Kamaunu: The Talent, Ore., man is accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl he met on Facebook. Kamaunu allegedly has done this before: He was arrested in March on similar charges stemming from an incident in September 2014. Predators live everywhere, and online is no exception. The old parental advice of not talking to strangers ought to apply on social media as well. Remember that, kids.

Gerod Roth: The Atlanta-area man lost his job after he posted a selfie on Facebook with the black son of a co-worker. While that wasn’t a problem, the flood of racist comments that followed on Roth’s timeline was. Roth’s friends and followers drew insulting comparisons to “Little Black Sambo,” Kunta Kinte from the book “Roots,” among others. We should give Roth the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t intend for the photo to go viral among horrible people, but the story brings to mind an old They Might Be Giants song: “Your Racist Friends.”

Trump Hotels: I hope you didn’t stay at a Trump Hotel between May 2014 and June 2015. If you did, your data may have been stolen. Hackers had access to the payment systems at seven Trump Hotels, including hotel restaurants and gift shops, for 13 months. The Donald, who is chairman and president of Trump Hotel Collection, likes to deride others as “stupid” and “not very bright.” I wonder who the stupid people are in this scenario: the hackers or the hotel workers who didn’t discover it for over a year.

This week’s winner was an easy one: Tom Hanks.

Hanks tweeted a photo of a woman’s Fordham University ID card that he found in a park in New York City. The tweet was favorited more than 20,000 times and retweeted more than 9,500 times. Amazingly, it worked. The student who lost the ID has been identified, and said she’d be happy to meet Hanks to get her card back.

Lest you dismiss the power of social media, remember this story. Even more remarkable: Lauren Whitmore doesn’t even have a Twitter account.

Social media in general, and Facebook in particular, have been a boon to the liars and the gullible among us. Just this week we saw the resurfacing of a rumor, debunked years ago, that you had to post a legal notice in your Facebook status to protect the information on there.

Content on the Internet lasts forever, but our memories not so much; soon friends we thought of as otherwise reasonable people were posting this same notice, with the “Better safe than sorry” disclaimer.

Turns out the safe option would have been to ignore these specious rumors.

Why do false rumors like this persist on social media? Part of it is that Facebook is a fertile breeding ground for false information. In a recent column I wrote about the communities there that still believe the earth is flat. There are pages dedicated to the lie that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Outside these relatively closed communities, misinformation still runs rampant. Did you see the photo meme of Pope Francis with a “quote” saying that you don’t need religion or church? It’s a fake.

Words are not enough to grab someone’s attention on social media. We know that in order to pause the infinite scroll in someone’s Facebook feed, you need an image — even if that image is nothing more than a block of text next to a mug shot.

By now, everyone knows that trick, so to grab eyeballs they seek the most attention-getting image or words possible. Who cares if it’s fiction?

We all should. The constant spreading of misinformation online makes it harder to tell what stories are true. This leads to the bubble that comedian Bill Maher talks about on his HBO show, “Real Time.” Soon we can’t even have debates on an issue because no one can agree on what reality is.

Craig Silverman, creator of the Regret The Error blog, has a post on Medium about four ways that journalists can verify information online. This is not just a task for journalists. If everyday users of social media don’t take steps to stop the flood of falsehoods, we are all complicit in the dismantling of truth online.

With that, I’ll leave you with this photo meme that I posted on my Twitter and Facebook pages. You can be reasonably sure I said it, but double check anyway.